> Let's assume that you care to keep executables with debugging
> symbols around. In that case, the old recommendation would
> have you build the package once. The new recommendation
> would have you compile twice. Time saved?
>
> Let's assume that you don't care to keep executables with
> debugging symbols around. In that case, you compile without
> -g -- end of story.
You forgot the case of recompilations: If default is with -g + strip
(as policy currently recommends), a lot of time is wasted on the
auto-builder machines. The built source trees there are removed
immediately after a successful build. That's what Ben's proposal was
about at the start.
We want that the "normal" case (what is normal? :-) in future is to
build without -g to save CPU cycles on the auto-builders. If there's
one or the other package where it's hard to remove the -g or where
the maintainer is too lazy to do it, that isn't really bad. On the
other hand, the source maintainer and users should have a convenient
method to build with debugging symbols.
Roman